Miles Per Hour to Feet Per Second (mph to ft/s)
1 mile per hour equals 1.466666667 feet per second (rounded).
How to convert miles per hour to feet per second
To convert miles per hour to feet per second, multiply the number of miles per hour by 1.466666667. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply feet per second by 0.6818181818 (rounded).
feet per second = miles per hour × 1.466666667
Example: 10 miles per hour = 14.66666667 feet per second.
About these units
Mile Per Hour (mph)
Exactly 0.44704 m/s. The unit for road speeds in the US, UK and a few other countries.
Early British motoring law is the best window into this unit. The 1861 Locomotive Act set a limit of 10 mph for light locomotives. The 1865 Red Flag Act cut it to 4 mph in the country and 2 mph in towns, with a person walking ahead with a flag. The Locomotives on Highways Act of 1896 raised it to 14 mph, and the Motor Car Act of 1903 to 20 mph. In 1931 all limits for cars were abolished, and 30 mph in built-up areas returned in 1935.
The mile per hour combines the mile, set at 5,280 feet in Elizabeth I's reign, with the hour, and it equals exactly 0.44704 m/s or 1.609344 km/h. The United Kingdom and United States use it on roads, along with several smaller countries, mostly territories or former territories of those two, and the US, Canada and Ireland use it for rail. Sports such as cricket, tennis and baseball quote ball speeds in it. Aviation and shipping prefer knots, about 0.869 of one mph each.
1 mile per hour = 0.44704 meters per second (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Miles per hour; Wikipedia: Speed limits in the United Kingdom; Wikipedia: Mile
Foot Per Second (ft/s)
Exactly 0.3048 m/s. Used for velocity in US engineering, ballistics and fluid flow.
Compound units rarely have a recorded inventor, and the foot per second is a plain example: it is just a foot divided by a second. The foot underneath it began as a body-based length ranging historically from about 250 to 335 millimeters, with ancient Greek and Roman feet near 300 mm. Before the SI arrived in 1960, feet per second, miles per hour and knots were more common than meters per second, depending on region.
The 1959 international agreement fixed the foot at exactly 0.3048 meter, so one foot per second is exactly 0.3048 m/s, about 1.097 km/h or 0.6818 mph. Sound moves at about 1,125 ft/s in dry air at 20 °C, which is 343 m/s. Chuck Yeager's Bell X-1 reached about 361 m/s in 1947, near 1,184 ft/s. The unit remains common in American engineering and science, where lengths are still given in feet and inches.
1 foot per second = 0.3048 meters per second (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Foot per second; Wikipedia: Foot (unit); NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: conversion factors
Related conversions
- Feet per second to miles per hour (reverse)
- Miles per hour to meters per second
- Miles per hour to kilometers per hour
- Miles per hour to knots
- Miles per hour to Mach
- Miles per hour to speed of light
- Miles per hour to centimeters per second
- Miles per hour to millimeters per second
- Miles per hour to kilometers per second
- Miles per hour to kilometers per minute
- Miles per hour to meters per minute
- Miles per hour to inches per second
- Miles per hour to feet per minute
- Meters per second to feet per second
- Kilometers per hour to feet per second
- Knots to feet per second
- Mach to feet per second
- Speed of light to feet per second
See all speed units.